Looking in the Mirror: Exploring Judgement & Challenging Beliefs
If you asked me this morning about what I thought about judging others, I would have said that I am not a judgemental person. I embrace acceptance and kindness always.
The word judgement makes me think of those horrid magazines that you pass at the grocery store. It bothers me that these magazines exist and that people enjoy the ugly judgemental nature of them.
Would you consider yourself to be a judgemental or non judgemental person? How do others see you? I am considered to be a really nice person and quite non judgemental but - how true is this really? How judgemental am I really without even being conscience of it?
I had a lesson today that came about because of the Ecotrain question of the week "Why do you think most people judge each other. Is there value in it, does it help?"
When contemplating this question, I came upon a program called 'Project Implicit'. This is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition which is the thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet.
The Implicit Association has a series of tests that measures attitudes and beliefs that people are often unwilling or unable to report when asked directly. For example, when filling out a questionnaire with specific questions, you might answer them in the way you think they should be answered.
These IAT's are interesting because they measures the strength of association between concepts and evaluations. The results can show that you have an implicit attitude that you were completely unaware of. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equal in the work place, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with careers more than you associate women with careers.
The really crazy thing is that your preferences (judgements) can predict certain behaviour that you might not even be aware of (or admit) to yourself as true, which impacts a lot of things such as how you really treat others, gender inequality, discrimination in hiring and promotion, friendships, medical treatment or even decisions related to criminal justice.
My Score
I did the Weight ('Fat - Thin' IAT).
This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of people who are obese and people who are thin. It often reveals an automatic preference for thin people relative to fat people.
Before the test my assumption is that I would score that I had no judgement or preference between the two and that I was completely and perfectly non judgemental on this topic.
Well.
I WAS WRONG.
My test result stated that I have a STRONG AUTOMATIC PREFERENCE for Thin people over Fat people.
Oh. Wow.
Ouch.
This really embarrassed me. I didn't even want to share it with you. This challenged my beliefs and was quite humbling.
It really made me look in the mirror and accept that what we tell ourselves is not always really, really true. Sometimes deep down there is a nugget of judgement we have formed that perhaps we suppress or pretend does not exist but ... it still exists.
That really got me thinking about all of the judgements we have formed that we don't even see in ourselves and how limiting that can be. Admittedly I turn this judgement on myself often and society and judgements that have been passed onto me about the ideal appearance have a role in this. In fact the only person that I consciously judge over their weight, is myself. I am quite mean to myself when I gain weight. I yo-yo in weight and go from thin to slightly plump and back again. I have even been grotesquely thin in my quest to measure up.
Judgement is an ingrained tool that we use to observe and understand other people and situations. One example of judgement being useful is when we evaluate and judge that a certain person or situation is threatening to us. We do need to make certain judgements in order to thrive - However, our judgements, beliefs and assumptions should always questioned and challenged at every opportunity. It is when we stop evaluating and exploring and challenging ourselves that we fall short. It is when we deny the truth and fail to look in the mirror that judgement can control and limit us.
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I don´t need to do a test to know that I prefer thin people over fat people, it´s the smart thing to do.
I don´t live in a society where people are starving and therefore fat is a sign of wealth, I live in a society where people overconsume and fat usually means poor lifestyle choices, like lack of exercise, eating crap and drinking too much beer.
I have a cousin who is fat, but that´s because she has some disease where she is storing a lot of water in her tissue, but she is doing a lot of exercising and conscious eating to combat that, so I salute her for her efforts. She would also prefer to be thin because it would be easier on her joints, circulatory system etc.
I completely agree that judgements are necessary to make sensible life choices and for the betterment of our health, safety and overall well being. This was a challenging topic for me to explore and I appreciate you taking the time to read and comment.
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I took the age one and it showed a slight preference for older people over younger people. Hmmmmmm.......
That seems to me a healthy response! Had you had an overwhelming response to one of the other and perhaps you realize that you avoid being around children for example, they immediately make you cranky, it would be a great place to reflect and consider why and if it is healthy.
Making judgement really is engrained in us all and I think what is important is to make the right judgement, where we are not critical of others. It is actually a huge responsibility to make that right judgement, it means we really take the time to get to know someone. When we criticize others we are usually projecting how we feel about ourselves or our situation. This question sure has many layers, but ultimately judgement is not always bad
I agree absolutely! I am not a critical/judgemental person by nature. I tend to answer these questions on such an emotional/personal side and was trying to explore in a more analytic manner. I'm not sure If I succeeded at all! I found in the end after I asked all of the questions and reflected on this, the only person that I am deeply critical of is myself.
It's true we instinctively are judgemental on a subconscious level. Preference over fat or thin I think is an environmental indoctrination. In the west we are filtered with images that thin is beautiful fat is ugly (only now are we starting to change that negative bias in the media) but in certain African countries its been seen as big is beautiful (rich) and skinny (poor) and not desirable. Personally I'm not so judgemental about a person's weight but more about what they eat from a place of concern. That's goes for fat or skinny ppl because both sides can have bad or good diets. Normally you can tell if someone is healthy not just by the weight but by other factors, hair quality, eyes, skin etc these people I know on a subconcius level I'm more attracted too
oh, I agree. It truly is indoctrination in this particular example. I think what I learned from this little exploration was that I am not always aware or honest about how deeply it goes. I tend to think I am a free bird ...but I've got a long way to go before that is really true.